


Love Lift Us Up (Where We Belong)

by undersail2013



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brief Michael/Adam, Canon Temporary Character Death, Destiel is canon, F/M, Heaven, Hell, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Named but non speaking characters, Post-Canon Fix-It, Saileen - Freeform, The Empty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27644006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undersail2013/pseuds/undersail2013
Summary: Finale? What finale? That was just the Empty torturing a wayward gay angel... Here’s what really happened after Cas confessed his LOVE to Dean Winchester and was taken to Super Mega Hell:
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 98





	Love Lift Us Up (Where We Belong)

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited, unproofread, unbeta’d- just pure, unadulterated, whiskey-and-rage-fueled fix-it fic.

Cas slumbered, but fitfully. Oblivion plagued him with nightmares.

Some dreams replayed memories, even of memories that were not strictly his: one by one, everyone he loved torn apart at an atomic level, rent, poofed to dust. His sleeping self watched on a loop as Bobby, Charlie, Donna, nameless others fell, obliterated. 

He saw Michael slay Lucifer, the foregone conclusion so many times delayed.

He saw Michael betray the Winchesters. But how? Why? Michael had changed, hadn’t he? Adam had changed him. Even asleep, Cas knew this to be true.

He watched Jack, his loving and beloved son, fulfilling the promise Kelly had known he held.Jack bringing peace to the world, restoring balance, returning all life on earth to its rightful places.Cas was certain that this dream was true. He felt Jack’s presence, unmistakable lightness and goodness and purity.

The Empty roiled violently, rippling the fabric of its realm. 

The dreams changed again to nightmares.

Dean, alone. Sam, alone. Eileen, alone.

The hunters who had died were again whole and alive, walking the earth as if Chuck’s poisonous animosity had never snuffed them. And yet they were all isolated from one another.Oh, the younger children clung to their parents, but the parents drifted from one another. 

Charlie, alone. Donna, alone. Claire, alone.

The loneliness of the hunters infected the denizens of the Empty, and the Empty smiled in its sleep. 

Cas dreamed that he watched Dean dying, an ignominious death in a ramshackle barn. He felt a wave of revulsion, of jealousy, like he did in another barn, once upon a time, witnessing a kiss between Anna and Dean. What had he felt then, way back when, when feelings were still so new and frightening?Had he been in love then? 

The scene repeated, again and again, a horrible parody of what should have been. A confession of love, two foreheads touching, hands held over Dean’s heart. The scene replayed a hundred, a thousand times, Cas viewing from the vantage of the beloved, but Cas never could see who received Dean’s love. He only knew it wasn’t him. He could only watch through someone else’s eyes, hearing and seeing and feeling with intense loathing what should have been his.

Then Dean was dead.

The scene faded again. Cas saw Sam, living on, without Dean, without Jack, without Eileen, without hunters or hunting. In the space of a human heartbeat, he was married, raising a human child, a son. In another heartbeat, he was old, then dying, then greeting his brother in heaven.

He felt again a tug as if Jack were near.A faint glow. 

Cas woke. Two amber eyes shone above him. 

“Castiel,” said Jack, “something is wrong. I need your help.”

Cas scrambled to his feet.“The dreams? They were real?”

Jack couldn’t know what Cas had seen, and yet he shook his head and assured him that, no, those were the Empty playing tricks. “But reality is in danger.Heaven and Hell are out of balance.Heaven’s brightest are all here, when they should be up there.We’ll have to wake them.”

The Empty howled somewhere far off, something that sounded like, “Let me sleep!”

Jack stepped briskly in the inky blackness, tapping here and there, naming sleeping entities. “Hannah, you are needed. Duma, awaken. Gabriel. Michael. Raphael, your services are humbly requested.” 

Soon, the din of awakened angels, archangels, seraphs, and reapers had summoned a furious cosmic entity of entropy and oblivion.“KEEP. IT. DOWN,” it hissed. 

“And what will you do if we don’t?” Castiel asked, raising an eyebrow to the Empty, who stood before them in the guise of Meg Masters, circa 2009. 

The Empty stamped its foot.“I took you in. You all died the death of immortals, a death that cannot be rewarded nor punished, but I took you in! And all I ask for is quiet!”

“But why?” Cas continued. “You despise us. Why do you trap us here?”

The Empty hesitated.“They dream,” it replied. “They dream, and so I dream.”

“We suffer nightmares of your making.”

“No-oo.The dreams are yours.”

“You enjoy the nightmares?”

“No.” The Empty faltered.“They wake me up. You stir, I stir; I must sleep!”

Jack spoke softly to the Empty. “Then expel them.”

“Expel them? What, just set them all free to commit chaos?”

“Just the dreamers.”

The Empty seemed to calculate the price of granting the nephilim’s wish.“That would be almost all of the angels and a number of powerful demons.They might return, clomping into my haven and disturbing my sleep.”

“No,” Castiel put in, his eyes lit with a wry smile. “If you expel them, they will be forever banned from your realm. They become subject to Purgatory, not Oblivion.”

Jack smiled at his father. “Exactly!”He turned again to the Empty. “So you’ll do it?” he asked brightly.

The Empty scowled. It nodded once, as if making a decision.

The world went white, then faded to reveal a sunny meadow. Roly-poly bumblebees flitted between fat heads of purple clover.A nest of chickadees chirped. Cicadas droned.A red kite soared above them, the string held by someone a long way off.Cas’ face softened, as if recalling a long-lost memory. 

It hardened again as he sensed something amiss.“Jack,” he frowned, “the walls between the human heavens are failing.”

Jack nodded. “Yes, which is why we need more angelic energy. But watch.”He drew a small window in the air with his index finger. He pushed the cut-out, revealing an adjoining heaven belonging to a woman. Cas recognized her as the mother of the man with the kite. Her heaven contained a meadow: the same meadow that surrounded them, rather than the manicured lawn Cas knew from the man’s original heaven. 

“They can co-exist,” he breathed.

“Yes. We can break these barriers and open Heaven. It doesn’t need to be a prison. We can fix it.” Jack grinned again, that same old smile he’d worn in life, when he learned the taste of nougat or the softness of a bunny rabbit. 

The sight warmed Cas.The summer sky glowed just a bit brighter.“Tell me what to do, my son.”

***

For six days, as Heaven measures time, the angels, the archangels, and the nephilim worked.First, negotiating a truce with Hell and its imperious but righteous Queen, and then building a Heaven for all.On the seventh day, they rested from their labors. They gathered to watch the humans on earth for a little while. Almost no time had passed: the humans had had just enough time to recollect that they had watched their loved ones vanish; those unfamiliar with the supernatural had quickly forgotten the phenomenon, as well.The hunters in the warded hideout had had just enough time to embrace their newly un-vanished friends. 

Sam was texting Eileen, only to remember that he still had her phone, abandoned on the sidewalk mid-text. He laughed at himself.“We have to drive to Eileen’s house.”

Dean lay hunched over the table, carving a word into the polished wood alongside the Winchester family initials. Thus far, it read, “CAST,” and he was just starting on the I. “Pack us up- I wanna finish this, but I can be ready in twenty.”They watched as he finished his tribute to Castiel. He put two fingers to his lips, then pressed the finger pads against the grooves. 

Cas itched to know how Dean meant the gesture.

Dean hastily scratched the name “JACK” into the table, too. “You done good, kid,” he murmured, patting the letters as he might once have patted Jack on the shoulder.

The angels drifted back to their tasks.Cas stayed, watching his friends. His family.He followed their movements towards Eileen. He witnessed the tearful reunion.

Sam started sniffling long before Dean pulled up behind Eileen’s little red car.He stepped over the sidewalk, where he had first absorbed her death, and a sob escaped him.In a few strides of his long legs, he was at the door. His hand shook as he reached for the doorbell. The second phone in his pocket vibrated: her doorbell notification. How would she know that he was there? He clapped the knocker, stamped his feet. 

The door opened. Eileen. A vision, a sight for even Cas’ sore eyes. Sam was overwhelmed. He croaked her name, and she was in his arms. Where she belonged.

Back at the curb, Dean turned his face from the lovers. He fiddled with his phone, but who could he call? 

Cas heard Dean think his name. He felt a pang of longing, but it wasn’t his own.Or rather, it matched his own. Echoed his, merged with his, swelling the aching feeling until he felt full to bursting with yearning for something he thought he could never have. Had thought he couldn’t have. Now, he wondered.

He called to his son. 

Jack appeared beside him. He followed Cas’ gaze. “It’s time for you to return to him,” he mused. 

“Yes, but,” Cas tripped over the words he wanted to say and couldn’t bear to say. 

Fortunately, Jack understood.Without another word, he took Cas’ face in his hands. For a moment, their eyes glowed brightly, then Castiel’s dimmed to their customary shade of blue. When Jack’s golden aura had faded as well, he pulled away from Cas.He glanced down at the slim vial now slung around his neck by a black cord.The substance within sparkled, swirled, its hue a dazzling, electric blue-white. It looked like lightning in a bottle. 

Cas swept his son into a crushing embrace. “Thank you,” he wept.

“You can always come home,” Jack told him.

Cas pulled back. “No. Where I’m going is home.” He smiled through the tears rushing down his cheek. “Goodbye, Jack. I love you.”

He rather felt than heard Jack’s reply, as he crossed from the celestial plane to the mortal realm.He stood now on that same sidewalk. Far to his right, Sam lifted Eileen, carrying her bridal-style into her home, letting the door slam behind them. To his left, a long black car. He gripped the passenger door handle, pulled it open. The hinges squeaked. He folded himself inside before turning to the driver. 

Dean looked every bit as awed as Cas felt. This was right. 

Before he could say anything, even so much as a simple “Hello, Dean,” he found himself in Dean’s arms.Where he belonged. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ps, El Sol cerveza is the official beverage of fake-dream-worlds, and therefore the entire narrative of the finale is sus.


End file.
